Background Image

...

Our First And Most Pressing Problem Is How To Do Away With Warfare As A Method Of Solving Conflicts Between National Groups Within A Society Who Have Different Views About How The Society Is To Run.

-Margaret Mead

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Our First And Most

Margaret Mead

...

Our First And Most Pressing Problem Is How To Do Away With Warfare As A Method Of Solving Conflicts Between National Groups Within A Society Who Have Different Views About How The Society Is To Run.

Views: 4

Topic

More From Margaret Mead

Coming To Terms With The Rhythms Of Women's Lives Means Coming To Terms With Life Itself, Accepting The Imperatives Of The Body Rather Than The Imperatives Of An Artificial, Man-made, Perhaps Transcendentally Beautiful Civilization. Emphasis On The Male Work-rhythm Is An Emphasis On Infinite Possibilities; Emphasis On The Female Rhythms Is An Emphasis On A Defined Pattern, On Limitation.

Men Have Always Been Afraid That Women Could Get Along Without Them.

Throughout History, Females Have Picked Providers For Males. Males Pick Anything.

In The Presence Of Grandparent And Grandchild, Past And Future Merge In The Present.

Humanity . . . Lies In Man's Capacity To Question The Known And Imagine The Unknown.

A Woman, Even A Brilliant Woman, Must Have Two Qualities In Order To Fulfill Her Promise: More Energy Than Mere Mortals, And The Ability To Outwit Her Culture.

Just As The Difference In Height Between Males Is No Longer A Realistic Issue, Now That Lawsuits Have Been Substituted For Hand-to-hand Encounters, So The Difference In Strength Between Men And Women Is No Longer Worth Elaboration In Cultural Institutions.

Every Time We Liberate A Woman, We Liberate A Man.

It Used To Be When We Said, ''til Death Do Us Part,' Death Parted Us Pretty Soon. That's Why Marriages Used To Last Forever. Everybody Was Dead.

Even Though The Ship May Go Down, The Journey Goes On.

Never Depend Upon Institutions Or Government To Solve Any Problem. All Social Movements Are Founded By, Guided By, Motivated And Seen Through By The Passion Of Individuals.

Today's Children Are The First Generation To Grow Up In A World That Has The Power To Destroy Itself.

No Matter How Free Divorce, How Frequently Marriages Break Up, In Most Societies There Is The Assumption Of Permanent Mating, Of The Idea That The Marriage Should Last As Long As Both Live. . . . No Known Society Has Ever Invented A Form Of Marriage Strong Enough To Stick That Did Not Contain The 'till Death Us Do Part' Assumption.

We Won't Have A Society If We Destroy The Environment.

There Is No Greater Power In The World Than The Zest Of A Postmenopausal Woman.

I Must Admit That I Personally Measure Success In Terms Of The Contributions An Individual Makes To Her Or His Fellow Human Beings.

Congratulations

For The Very First Time The Young Are Seeing History Being Made Before It Is Censored By Their Elders.

Our Treatment Of Both Older People And Children Reflects The Value We Place On Independence And Autonomy. We Do Our Best To Make Our Children Independent From Birth. We Leave Them All Alone In Rooms With The Lights Out And Tell Them, 'go To Sleep By Yourselves.' And The Old People We Respect Most Are The Ones Who Will Fight For Their Independence, Who Would Sooner Starve To Death Than Ask For Help.

Fathers Are Biological Necessities, But Social Accidents.

[in Bali] Life Is A Rhythmic, Patterned Unreality Of Pleasant, Significant Movement, Centered In One's Own Body To Which All Emotions Long Ago Withdrew.

No Society That Feeds Its Children On Tales Of Successful Violence Can Expect Them Not To Believe That Violence In The End Is Rewarded.

The Solution To Adult Problems Tomorrow Depends On Large Measure Upon How Our Children Grow Up Today.

We — Mankind — Stand At The Center Of An Evolutionary Crisis, With A New Evolutionary Device — Our Consciousness Of The Crisis — As Our Unique Contribution.

If I Were To Be Taken Hostage, I Would Not Plead For Release Nor Would I Want My Government To Be Blackmailed. I Think Certain Government Officials, Industrialists And Celebrated Persons Should Make It Clear They Are Prepared To Be Sacrificed If Taken Hostage. If That Were Done, What Gain Would There Be For Terrorists In Taking Hostages?

It Was Not Until We Saw The Picture Of The Earth, From The Moon, That We Realized How Small And How Helpless This Planet Is - Something That We Must Hold In Our Arms And Care For.

I Learned To Observe The World Around Me, And To Note What I Saw

A City Must Be A Place Where Groups Of Women And Men Are Seeking And Developing The Highest Things They Know.

People Are Still Encouraged To Marry As If They Could Count On Marriage Being For Life, And At The Same Time They Are Absorbing A Knowledge Of The Great Frequency Of Divorce.

Because Our Civilization Is Woven Of So Many Diverse Strands, The Ideas Which Any One Group Accepts Will Be Found To Contain Numerous Contradictions.

An Education Not Founded On Art Will Never Succeed.

The Closest Friends I Made All Through Life Have Been People Who Also Grew Up Close To A Loved And Loving Grandmother Or Grandfather.

In Every Human Society Of Which We Have Any Record, There Are Those Who Teach And Those Who Learn, For Learning A Way Of Life Is Implicit In All Human Culture As We Know It. But The Separation Of The Teacher's Role From The Role Of All Adults Who Inducted The Young Into The Habitual Behavior Of The Group, Was A Comparatively Late Invention. Furthermore, When We Do Find Explicit And Defined Teaching, In Primitive Societies We Find It Tied In With A Sense Of The Rareness Or The Precariousness Of Some Human Tradition.

Women Are Scolded Both For Being Mothers And For Not Being Mothers, For Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too, And For Not Wanting To Eat Their Cake And Have It Too.

Those Social Behaviors Which Automatically Preclude The Building Of A Democratic World Must Go - Every Social Limitation Of Human Beings In Terms Of Heredity, Whether It Be Of Race, Or Sex, Or Class. Every Social Institution Which Teaches Human Beings To Cringe To Those Above And Step On Those Below Must Be Replaced By Institutions Which Teach People To Look Each Other Straight In The Face.

Of All The Peoples Whom I Have Studied, From City Dwellers To Cliff Dwellers, I Always Find That At Least 50 Percent Would Prefer To Have At Least One Jungle Between Themselves And Their Mothers-in-law.

It Is Utterly False And Cruelly Arbitrary... To Put All The Play And Learning Into Childhood, All The Work Into Middle Age, And All The Regrets Into Old Age.

The Assumption That Men And Woman Are Essentially Alike In All Respects, Or Even In The Most Important Ones, Is A Damaging One, As Damaging As The Assumption That They Are Different In Ways In Which They Aren't Different, Perhaps More So.

When I Stand On A Street In A Canadian City And Look Across The Street, It Couldn't Be Anywhere But Canada, But How Can I Prove It?

We Women Are Doing Pretty Well. We're Almost Back To Where We Were In The Twenties.

I Was A Child That Both My Parents Wanted. I Was Told From The Time I Was Born That I Was Totally Satisfactory. I Had A Chance To Be What I Wanted To Be.

For Art To Be Reality, The Whole Sensuous Being Must Be Caught Up In The Experience.

Through A Grandmother's Voice And Hands The End Of Life Is Known At The Beginning.

I Learned The Value Of Hard Work By Working Hard.

Be Who You Really Are, Do What You Want To Do, In Order To Have What You Really Want.

Mourning Has Become Unfashionable In The United States. The Bereaved Are Supposed To Pull Themselves Together As Quickly As Possible And To Reweave The Torn Fabric Of Life. ... We Do Not Allow ... For The Weeks And Months During Which A Loss Is Realized - A Beautiful Word That Suggests The Transmutation Of The Strange Into Something That Is One's Own.

We Are Living Beyond Our Means. As A People We Have Developed A Life-style That Is Draining The Earth Of Its Priceless And Irreplaceable Resources Without Regard For The Future Of Our Children And People All Around The World.

I Discovered When I Had A Child Of My Own That I Had Become A Biased Observer Of Small Children. Instead Of Looking At Them With Affectionate But Nonpartisan Eyes, I Saw Each Of Them As Older Or Younger, Bigger Or Smaller, More Or Less Graceful, Intelligent, Or Skilled Than My Own Child.

Man's Most Human Characteristic Is Not His Ability To Learn, Which He Shares With Many Other Species, But His Ability To Teach And Store What Others Have Developed And Taught Him.

What People Say, What People Do, And What They Say They Do Are Entirely Different Things.

I Think The Important Thing About Sisters Is That They Share The Same Minute, Familiar Life-style, The Same Little Sets Of Rules. Therefore They Can Keep House With Each Other Late In Life, Because They Share The Same Bunch Of Housewifely Prejudices. The Important Thing About Women Today Is, As They Get Older, They Still Keep House. It's One Reason They Don't Die, But Men Die When They Retire. Women Just Polish The Teacups.

It Is Typical, In America, That A Person's Hometown Is Not The Place Where He Is Living Now But Is The Place He Left Behind.

Life In The Twentieth Century Is Like A Parachute Jump: You Have To Get It Right The First Time.

Warfare ... Is Just An Invention, Older And More Widespread Than The Jury System, But None The Less An Invention.

It Is Not Until Science Has Become A Discipline To Which The Research Ability Of Any Mind From Any Class In Society Can Be Attracted That It Can Become Rigorously Scientific.

We Have Nowhere Else To Go... This Is All We Have.

If The Future Is To Remain Open And Free, We Need People Who Can Tolerate The Unknown, Who Will Not Need The Support Of Completely Worked Out Systems Or Traditional Blueprints From The Past.

Human Beings Do Not Carry Civilization In Their Genes. All That We Do Carry In Our Genes Are Certain Capacities- The Capacity To Learn To Walk Upright, To Use Our Brains, To Speak, To Relate To Our Fellow Men, To Construct And Use Tools, To Explore The Universe, And To Express That Exploration In Religion, In Art, In Science, In Philosophy.

Love Is The Invention Of A Few High Cultures ... It Is Cultural Artifact. To Make Love The Requirement Of A Lifelong Marriage Is Exceedingly Difficult, And Only A Few People Can Achieve It. I Don't Believe In Setting Universal Standards That A Large Proportion Of People Can't Reach.

No Country That Permits Firearms To Be Widely And Randomly Distributed Among Its Population - Especially Firearms That Are Capable Of Wounding And Killing Human Beings - Can Expect To Escape Violence, And A Great Deal Of Violence.

The Way To Do Fieldwork Is Never To Come Up For Air Until It Is All Over.

Manners, Really Good Ones, Make It Possible To Live With Almost Anyone, Gracefully And Pleasantly.

Loving You Is Just Like Breathing, As Effortless, And As Lovely.

Anthropology... Has Always Been Highly Dependent Upon Photography... As The Use Of Still Photography - And Moving Pictures - Has Become Increasingly Essential As A Part Of Anthropological Methods, The Need For Photographers With A Disciplined Knowledge Of Anthropology And For Anthropologists With Training In Photography Has Increased. We Expect That In The Near Future Sophisticated Training In Photography Will Be A Requirement For All Anthropologists. (1962)

Everyone Needs To Have Access Both To Grandparents And Grandchildren In Order To Be A Full Human Being.

The Institution Of Marriage In All Societies Is A Pattern Within Which The Strains Put By Civilization On Males And Females Alike Must Be Resolved, A Pattern Within Which Men Must Learn, In Return For A Variety Of Elaborate Rewards, New Forms In Which Sexual Spontaneity Is Still Possible, And Women Must Learn To Discipline Their Receptivity To A Thousand Other Considerations.

I Was Brought Up To Believe That The Only Thing Worth Doing Was To Add To The Sum Of Accurate Information In The World.

Pigs And Cows And Chickens And People Are All Competing For Grain.

We End Up With The Contradictory Picture Of A Society That Appears To Throw Its Doors Wide Open To Women, But Translates Her Every Step Towards Success As Having Been Damaging.

Earth Day Uses One Of Humanity's Great Discoveries, The Discovery Of Anniversaries By Which, Throughout Time, Human Beings Have Kept Their Sorrows And Their Joys, Their Victories, Their Revelations And Their Obligations Alive, For Re-celebration And Re-dedication Another Year, Another Decade, Another Century, Another Eon.

In Contrast To Our Own Social Environment Which Brings Out Different Aspects Of Human Nature And Often Demonstrated That Behavior Which Occurs Almost Invariably In Individuals Within Our Society Is Nevertheless Due Not To Original Nature But To Social Environment; And A Homogeneous And Simple Development Of The Individual May Be Studied.

The Differences Between The Two Sexes Is One Of The Important Conditions Upon Which We Have Built The Many Varieties Of Human Culture That Give Human Beings Dignity And Stature.

To The Extent A Person Makes, Invents Or Thinks Something That Is New To Him, He May Be Said To Have Performed A Creative Act.

In This Country, Some People Start Being Miserable About Growing Old While They Are Still Young.

Because Of Their Age Long Training In Human Relations For That Is What Feminine Intuition Really Is Women Have A Special Contribution To Make Any Group Enterprise.

Britons Put Up With, Americans Fix, Canadians Cope

It Is Easier To Change A Man's Religion Than To Change His Diet.

Whatever Advantages May Have Arisen, In The Past, Out Of The Existence Of A Specially Favored And Highly Privileged Aristocracy, It Is Clear To Me That Today No Argument Can Stand That Supports Unequal Opportunity Or Any Intrinsic Disqualification For Sharing In The Whole Of Life.

If Sports Are The Toy Department Of Life, Then The Nfl Is The Fao Schwartz Of Sports.

Once Any Group In Society Stands In A Relatively Deprived Position In Relation To Other Groups, It Is Genuinely Deprived.

Human Beings Seem To Hold On More Tenaciously To A Cultural Identity That Is Learned Through Suffering Than To One That Has Been Acquired Through Pleasure And Delight.

The Negative Cautions Of Science Are Never Popular.

You "have A Date," You "go Out With A Date," You "groan Because There Isn't A Decent Date In Town." A Situation Defined As Containing A Girl - Or Boy - Of The Right Social Background, The Right Degree Of Popularity, A Little Higher Than Your Own.

You Know You Love Someone When You Cannot Put Into Words How They Make You Feel.

I Had No Reason To Doubt That Brains Were Suitable For A Woman.

If One Cannot State A Matter Clearly Enough So That Even An Intelligent Twelve-year-old Can Understand It, One Should Remain Within The Cloistered Walls Of The University And Laboratory Until One Gets A Better Grasp Of One's Subject Matter.

It Is An Open Question Whether Any Behavior Based On Fear Of Eternal Punishment Can Be Regarded As Ethical Or Should Be Regarded As Merely Cowardly.

Any Town That Doesn't Have Sidewalks Doesn't Love Its Children.

...recognize And Respect Earth's Beautiful Systems Of Balance, Between The Presence Of Animals On Land, The Fish In The Sea, Birds In The Air, Mankind, Water, Air, And Land. Most Importantly There Must Always Be Awareness Of The Actions By People That Can Disturb This Precious Balance.

Never Underestimate That A Small Group Of People Can Hold Up A Liquor License. Sometimes, It's The Only Thing That Can.

An Ideal Culture Is One That Makes A Place For Every Human Gift

Jealousy Is Not A Barometer By Which The Depth Of Love Can Be Read. It Merely Records The Degree Of The Lover's Insecurity.

We Must Bear In Mind The Possibility That The Greater Opportunities Open In The Twentieth Century To Women May Be Quite Withdrawn, And That We May Return To Stricter Regimentation Of Women.

You Just Have To Learn Not To Care About The Dusty Mites Under The Beds.

Women Have An Important Contribution To Make.

Important Contributions

Life Is In One Of Its Smoother Phases ... I've No Responsibilities In The World Except Friends And Students And Cherishing The Life Of The World -- And The Belief That There Is Enough Love To Go Round.

I Used To Say To My Classes That The Ways To Get Insight Are: To Study Infants; To Study Animals; To Study Primitive People; To Be Psychoanalyzed; To Have A Religious Conversion And Get Over It; To Have A Psychotic Episode And Get Over It; Or To Have A Love Affair With An Old Russian. And I Stopped Saying That When A Little Dancer In The Front Row Put Up Her Hand And Said, 'does He Have To Be Old?

One Of The Oldest Human Needs Is Having Someone To Wonder Where You Are When You Don't Come Home At Night.

Creationism: The Theory That Rome Was Built In A Day.

Where We Choose To Put Our Attention Changes Our Brain, Which In Time Can Change How We See And Interact With The World.

Even Very Recently, The Elders Could Say: 'you Know, I Have Been Young And You Never Have Been Old.' But Today's Young People Can Reply: 'you Never Have Been Young In The World I Am Young In, And You Never Can Be.' ... The Older Generation Will Never See Repeated In The Lives Of Young People Their Own Unprecedented Experience Of Sequentially Emerging Change. This Break Between Generations Is Wholly New: It Is Planetary And Universal.

The Anonymity Of The City Is One Of Its Strengths As Well As - Carried Too Far - One Of Its Weaknesses.

For Immanuel Kant, The Term Anthropology Embraced All The Human Sciences, And Laid The Foundation Of Familiar Knowledge We Need, To Build Solidly Grounded Ideas About The Moral And Political Demands Of Human Life. Margaret Mead Saw Mid-twentieth-century Anthropology As Engaged In A Project No Less Ambitious Than Kant's Own, And Her Terry Lectures On Continuities In Cultural Evolution Provide An Excellent Point To Enter Into Her Reflections.

No Skill, No Special Aptitude, No Vividness Of Imagination Or Precision Of Thinking Would Go Unrecognized Because The Child Who Possessed It Was Of One Sex Rather Than The Other. No Child Would Be Relentlessly Shaped To One Pattern Of Behavior, But Instead There Should Be Many Patterns, In A World That Had Learned To Allow To Each Individual The Pattern Which Was Most Congenial To His Gifts.

The Samoan Puts The Burden Of Amatory Success Upon The Man And Believes That Women Need More Initiating, More Time For Maturing Of Sexual Feeling. A Man Who Fails To Satisfy A Woman Is Looked Upon As A Clumsy, Inept Blunderer.

If We Are To Give Our Utmost Effort And Skill And Enthusiasm, We Must Believe In Ourselves, Which Means Believing In Our Past And In Our Future, In Our Parents And In Our Children, In That Particular Blend Of Moral Purpose And Practical Inventiveness Which Is The American Character.

And When Our Baby Stirs And Struggles To Be Born It Compels Humility: What We Began Is Now Its Own.

There Are Now No Elders Who Know More Than The Young Themselves About What The Young Are Experiencing.

From A Hundred Cultures, [there Is] One Culture Which Does What No Culture Has Ever Done Before-gives A Place To Every Human Gift.

To The Extent That Either Sex Is Disadvantaged, The Whole Culture Is Poorer, And The Sex That, Superficially, Inherits The Earth, Inherits Only A Very Partial Legacy. The More Whole The Culture, The More Whole Each Member, Each Man, Each Woman, Each Child Will Be.

All Of Us Who Grew Up Before World War Ii Are Immigrants In Time, Immigrants From An Earlier World, Living In An Age Essentially Different From Anything We Knew Before.

As Far Back As Our Knowledge Takes Us, Human Beings Have Lived In Families. We Know Of No Period When This Was Not So. We Know Of No People Who Have Succeeded For Long In Dissolving The Family Or Displacing It.

Earth Day Is The First Holy Day...and Is Devoted To The Harmony Of Nature... The Celebration Offends No Historical Calendar, Yet It Transcends Them All.

A City Is A Place Where There Is No Need To Wait For Next Week To Get The Answer To A Question, To Taste The Food Of Any Country, To Find New Voices To Listen To And Familiar Ones To Listen To Again.

[among The Arapeh... Both Father And Mother Are Held Responsible For Child Care By The Entire Community...] If One Comments Upon A Middle-aged Man As Good-looking, The People Answer: 'good-looking? Ye-e-e-s? But You Should Have Seen Him Before He Bore All Those Children'.

Sooner Or Later I'm Going To Die, But I'm Not Going To Retire.

Sooner Or Later

Sister Is Probably The Most Competitive Relationship Within The Family, But Once The Sisters Are Grown, It Becomes The Strongest Relationship.

Interest And Proficiency In Almost Any One Activity-swimming, Boating, Fishing, Skiing, Skating-breed Interest In Many More. Once Someone Discovers The Delight Of Mastering One Skill, However Slightly, He Is Likely To Try Out Not Just One More, But A Whole Ensemble.

Our First And Most Pressing Problem Is How To Do Away With Warfare As A Method Of Solving Conflicts Between National Groups Within A Society Who Have Different Views About How The Society Is To Run.

Dancing Is The Only Activity In Which Almost All Ages And Both Sexes Participate.

Mead's Anthropology Had Many Other Red, White And Blue- Blooded Virtues. One Was The Common Anthropological Conceit, Out Of Which She Made A Career, To The Effect That The Ultimate Value Of Studying Other Cultures Was The Use We Could Make Of Them To Reconstruct Our Own - A Heady Kind Of Intellectual Imperialism, As If The Final Meaning Of Others' Lives Was Their Significance For Us.

American Society Is Very Like A Fish Society. . . . Among Certain Species Of Fish, The Only Thing Which Determines Order Of Dominance Is Length Of Time In The Fishbowl. The Oldest Resident Picks On The Newest Resident, And If The Newest Resident Is Removed To A New Bowl, He, As Oldest Resident, Will Pick On The Newcomers.

We May Say That Many, If Not All, Of The Personality Traits Which We Have Called Masculine Or Feminine Are As Lightly Linked To Sex As Are The Clothing, The Manners, And The Form Of Headdress That A Society At A Given Period Assigns To Either Sex.

Masculine And Feminine

The United States Has The Power To Destroy The World, But Not The Power To Save It Alone

Instead Of Needing Lots Of Children, We Need High-quality Children.

Both Men And Women Are Conceived As Merely Capable Of Response To A Situation That Their Society Has Already Defined For Them As Sexual, And So The Arapesh Feel That It Is Necessary To Chaperon Betrothed Couples Who Are Too Young... With Their Definition Of Sex As A Response To An External Situation Rather Than As Spontaneous Desire, Both Men And Women Are Regarded As Helpless In The Face Of Seduction. Parents Warn Their Sons Even More Than They Warn Their Daughters Against Permitting Themselves To Get Into Situations In Which Someone Can Make Love To Them.

The First Step In The Direction Of A World Rule Of Law Is The Recognition That Peace No Longer Is An Unobtainable Ideal But A Necessary Condition Of Continued Human Existence. But To Take Even This Step We Must Return To A Calm And Responsible Frame Of Mind In Which We Can Face The Long Patient Tasks Ahead.

Earth Day Reminds The People Of The World Of The Need For Continuing Care Which Is Vital To Earth's Safety.

People In America, Of Course, Live In All Sorts Of Fashions, Because They Are Foreigners, Or Unlucky, Or Depraved, Or Without Ambition; People Live Like That, But Americans Live In White Detached Houses With Green Shutters. Rigidly, Blindly, The Dream Takes Precedence.

I Approached The Idea Of College With The Expectation Of Taking Part In An Intellectual Feast. ... In College, In Some Way That I Devoutly Believed In But Could Not Explain, I Expected To Become A Person.

We Are At A Point In History Where A Proper Attention To Space, And Especially Near Space, May Be Absolutely Crucial In Bringing The World Together.

If They Learn Easily, They Are Penalized For Being Bored When They Have Nothing To Do; If They Excel In Some Outstanding Way, They Are Penalized As Being Conspicuously Better Than The Peer Group. The Culture Tries To Make The Child With A Gift Into A One-sided Person, To Penalize Him At Every Turn, To Cause Him Trouble In Making Friends And To Create Conditions Conducive To The Development Of A Neurosis. Neither Teachers, The Parents Of Other Children, Nor The Child Peers Will Tolerate A Wunderkind.

The Ability To Learn Is Older As It Is Also More Widespread Than Is The Ability To Teach.

It Has Been A Woman's Task Throughout History To Go On Believing In Life When There Was Almost No Hope.

Sometimes, Instead Of Helping People To Advance, A Discovery Or An Invention Holds Them Back.

The Young, Free To Act On Their Initiative, Can Lead Their Elders In The Direction Of The Unknown... The Children, The Young, Must Ask The Questions That We Would Never Think To Ask, But Enough Trust Must Be Re-established So That The Elders Will Be Permitted To Work With Them On The Answers.

Maleness In America Is Not Absolutely Defined; It Has To Be Kept And Re-earned Every Day, And One Essential Element In The Definition Is Beating Women In Every Game That Both Sexes Play.

Contentment Can Be Bought At A Price That One Can Not Possibly Pay.

An Occupation That Has No Basis In Sex-determined Gifts Can Now Recruit Its Ranks From Twice As Many Potential Artists.

We Must Recognize That Beneath The Superficial Classifications Of Sex And Race The Same Potentialities Exist, Recurring Generation After Generation, Only To Perish Because Society Has No Place For Them.

Home, I Learned, Can Be Anywhere You Make It. Home Is Also The Place To Which You Come Back Again And Again.

Again And Again

What Are The Determinative Factors In The Early Training Of The Child Which Assures That It Will Be Placid And Contented, Unaggressive And Non-initiatory, Non-competitive And Responsive, Warm, Docile, And Trusting?

Learned Behaviors Have Replaced The Biologically Given Ones.

Learned Behavior

Instead Of Being Presented With Stereotypes By Age, Sex, Color, Class, Or Religion, Children Must Have The Opportunity To Learn That Within Each Range, Some People Are Loathsome And Some Are Delightful.

Each Suburban Housewife Spends Her Time Presiding Over A Power Plant Sufficient To Have Staffed The Palace Of A Roman Emperor With A Hundred Slaves.

Human Nature Is Almost Unbelievably Malleable, Responding Accurately And Contrastingly To Contrasting Cultural Conditions.

Everybody's Suffering Is Mine But Not Everybody's Murdering ... I Do Not Distinguish For One Moment Whether My Child Is In Danger Or A Child In Central Asia. But I Will Not Accept Responsibility For What Other People Do Because I Happen To Belong To That Nation Or That Race Or That Religion. I Do Not Believe In Guilt By Association.

Envy Of The Male Role Can Come As Much From An Undervaluation Of The Role Of Wife And Mother As From An Overvaluation Of The Public Aspects Of Achievement That Have Been Reserved For Men.

The Problem With America Today Is That Too Many People Know Too Much About Not Enough.

One Characteristic Of Americans Is That They Have No Toleration At All Of Anybody Putting Up With Anything. We Believe That Whatever Is Going Wrong Ought To Be Fixed.

Characteristics

I Have Been Accused Of Having Believed When I Wrote Sex And Temperament That There Are No Sex Differences... This, Many Readers Felt, Was Too Much. It Was Too Pretty. I Must Have Found What I Was Looking For. But This Misconception Comes From A Lack Of Understanding Of What Anthropology Means, Of The Open-mindedness With Which One Must Look And Listen, Record In Astonishment And Wonder, That Which One Would Not Have Been Able To Guess.

Mothers Are A Biological Necessity; Fathers Are A Social Invention

Ninety-nine Percent Of The Time Humans Have Lived On This Planet We've Lived In Tribes, Groups Of 12 To 36 People. Only During Times Of War, Or What We Have Now, Which Is The Psychological Equivalent Of War, Does The Nuclear Family Prevail, Because It's The Most Mobile Unit That Can Ensure The Survival Of The Species. But For The Full Flowering Of The Human Spirit We Need Groups, Tribes.

Today Our Approaches To Children Are Fragmented And Partial. Those Who Care For Well Children Know Little Of Children Who Are Sick. The Deep Knowledge That Comes From The Intensive Attempt To Cure Is Separated From The Knowledge Of Those Whose Main Task Is To Teach.

A Society Which Is Clamouring For Choice, Which Is Filled With Many Articulate Groups, Each Urging Its Own Brand Of Salvation, Its Own Variety Of Economic Philosophy, Will Give Each New Generation No Peace Until All Have Chosen Or Gone Under, Unable To Bear The Conditions Of Choice.

To Demand That Another Love What One Loves Is Tyranny Enough, But To Demand That Another Hate What One Hates, Is Even Worse.

For The Human Species To Evolve, The Conversation Must Deepen.

Never Believe That A Few Caring People Can't Change The World. For, Indeed, That's All Who Ever Have.

The Experience Of Having Brothers And Sisters, Born Of The Same Parents, Sleeping Under The Same Roof, Eating At The Same Table, Is An Inescapable, Delightful And Repelling, Desired And Abhorred Part Of Each Child's Life.

With The Exception Of The Few Cases To Be Discussed In The Next Chapter, Adolescence Represented No Period Of Crisis Or Stress, But Was Instead An Orderly Developing Of A Set Of Slowly Maturing Interests And Activities.

... Some Veil Between Childhood And The Present Is Necessary. If The Veil Is Withdrawn, The Artistic Imagination Sickens And Dies, The Prophet Looks In The Mirror With A Disillusioned And Cynical Sneer, The Scientist Goes Fishing.

[partly As A Consequence Of Male Authority] Prestige Value Always Attaches To The Activities Of Men.

As The Traveler Who Has Once Been From Home Is Wiser Than He Who Has Never Left His Own Doorstep, So A Knowledge Of One Other Culture Should Sharpen Our Ability To Scrutinize More Steadily, To Appreciate More Lovingly, Our Own.

Our First And Most Pressing Problem Is How To Do Away With Warfare As A Method Of Solving Conflicts Between National Groups Or Between Groups Within A Society Who Have Different Views About How The Society Is To Be Run. If You Look Back, You Will See That Warfare Was An Invention, Just As Ways Of Handling Government Or Taxes Are Inventions. You Will See, Too, That Once People Use An Invention They Go On Using It Until They Find Another Which They Think Is Superior.

The Capacity For Friendship Usually Goes With Highly Developed Civilizations. The Ability To Cultivate People Differs By Culture And Class; But On The Whole, Educated People Have More Ways To Make Friends... . In England, For Instance, You Find Everyone In Your Class Has Read The Same Books. Here, People Grope For Something In Common-like A Newly Engaged Girl Who Came To Me And Said, "it's Absolutely Wonderful! His Uncle And My Cousin Were On The Same Football Team.

Margaret Mead Was Both A Student Of Civilization And An Exemplar Of It. To A Public Of Millions, She Brought The Central Insight Of Cultural Anthropology: That Varying Cultural Patterns Express An Underlying Human Unity. She Mastered Her Discipline, But She Also Transcended It. Intrepid, Independent, Plain Spoken, Fearless, She Remains A Model For The Young And A Teacher From Whom All May Learn.

Women Want Mediocre Men, And Men Are Working To Be As Mediocre As Possible.

We Are Now At A Point Where We Must Educate Our Children In What No One Knew Yesterday, And Prepare Our Schools For What No One Knows Yet.

Laughter, That Distinctively Human Emotion, Laughter Which Springs From Trust In The Other, From Willingness To Put Oneself Momentarily In The Other's Place, Even At One's Own Expense, Is The Special Emotional Basis Of Democratic Procedures, Just As Pride Is The Emotion Of An Aristocracy, Shame Of A Crowd That Rules, And Fear Of A Police State.

If We Are To Achieve A Richer Culture, Rich In Contrasting Values, We Must Recognize The Whole Gamut Of Human Potentialities, And So Weave A Less Arbitrary Social Fabric, One In Which Each Diverse Human Gift Will Find A Fitting Place.

Female Animals Defending Their Young Are Notoriously Ferocious And Lack The Playful Delight In Combat Which Characterizes The Mock Combats Of Males Of The Same Species. There Seems Very Little Ground For Claiming That The Mother Of Young Children Is More Peaceful, More Responsible, And More Thoughtful For The Welfare Of The Human Race Than Is Her Husband Or Brother.

Keeping Even The Most Humble Talent Wrapped In A Napkin Becomes The More Reprehensible The Greater The Emergency.

War Is Only An Invention, Not A Biological Necessity.

There Is No Greater Insight Into The Future Than Recognizing...when We Save Our Children, We Save Ourselves

Wonder Is Very Important, Because If We Never Wondered, We Would Never Get To The Point Of Asking Questions. Yet Wonder May Lead People To Write Poetry Or To Paint Pictures Or To Pray, As Well As To Ask The Kinds Of Questions About The World And Themselves That Can Be Answered By Science.

Asking Questions

Don't Depend On Governments Or Corporations To Fix Problems. Social Revolutions Are Led By Passionate Individuals And That's What Makes The Difference.

We Will Be A Better Country When Each Religious Group Can Trust Its Members To Obey The Dictates Of Their Own Religious Faith Without Assistance From The Legal Structure Of The Country.

The City As A Center Where, Any Day In Any Year, There May Be A Fresh Encounter With A New Talent, A Keen Mind Or A Gifted Specialist-this Is Essential To The Life Of A Country. To Play This Role In Our Lives A City Must Have A Soul-a University, A Great Art Or Music School, A Cathedral Or A Great Mosque Or Temple, A Great Laboratory Or Scientific Center, As Well As The Libraries And Museums And Galleries That Bring Past And Present Together. A City Must Be A Place Where Groups Of Women And Men Are Seeking And Developing The Highest Things They Know.

Living In The Modern World, Clothed And Muffled, Forced To Convey Our Sense Of Our Bodies In Terms Of Remote Symbols Like Walking Sticks And Umbrellas And Handbags, It Is Easy To Lose Sight Of The Immediacy Of The Human Body Plan.

As Long As Any Adult Thinks That He, Like The Parents And Teachers Of Old, Can Become Introspective, Invoking His Own Youth To Understand The Youth Before Him, He Is Lost.

Laughter Is Man's Most Distinctive Emotional Expression. Man Shares The Capacity For Love And Hate, Anger And Fear, Loyalty And Grief, With Other Living Creatures. But Humour, Which Has An Intellectual As Well As An Emotional Element Belongs To Man

There Is No Hierarchy Of Values By Which One Culture Has The Right To Insist On All Its Own Values And Deny Those Of Another.

I Am Interested In What Happens To People Who Find The Whole Of Life So Rewarding That They Are Able To Move Through It With The Same Kind Of Delight In Which A Child Moves Through A Game.

There Is No Evidence That Suggests Women Are Naturally Better At Caring For Children... With The Fact Of Child-bearing Out Of The Centre Of Attention, There Is Even More Reason For Treating Girls First As Human Beings, Then As Women.

The Negative Cautions Of Science Are Never Popular. If The Experimentalist Would Not Commit Himself, The Social Philosopher, The Preacher, And The Pedagogue Tried The Harder To Give A Short-cut Answer.

Sisters, While They Are Growing Up, Tend To Be Very Rivalrous And As Young Mothers They Are Given To Continual Rivalrous Comparisons Of Their Several Children. But Once The Children Grow Older, Sisters Draw Closer Together And Often, In Old Age, They Become Each Other's Chosen And Most Happy Companions. In Addition To Their Shared Memories Of Childhood And Of Their Relationship To Each Other's Children, They Share Memories Of The Same Home, The Same Homemaking Style, And The Same Small Prejudices About Housekeeping That Carry The Echoes Of Their Mother's Voice.

In All Cultures, Human Beings - In Order To Be Human - Must Understand The Nonhuman.

Children Not Only Have To Learn What Their Parents Learned In School, But Also Have To Learn How To Learn. This Has To Be Recognized As A New Problem Which Is Only Partly Solved.

The Assumption That Men Were Created Equal, With An Equal Ability To Make An Effort And Win An Earthly Reward, Although Denied Every Day By Experience, Is Maintained Every Day By Our Folklore And Our Daydreams.

No One Will Live All His Life In The World Into Which He Was Born And No One Will Die In The World In Which He Worked In His Maturity.

Having Two Bathrooms Ruined The Capacity To Co-operate.

The Semimetaphysical Problems Of The Individual And Society, Of Egoism And Altruism, Of Freedom And Determinism, Either Disappear Or Remain In The Form Of Different Phases In The Organization Of A Consciousness That Is Fundamentally Social.

And As I Had My Father's Kind Of Mind-which Was Also His Mother's-i Learned That The Mind Is Not Sex-typed.

This Is A Precious Possession Which We Cannot Afford To Tarnish, But Society Always Is Attempting To Make The Physician Into A Killer To Kill The Defective Child At Birth, To Leave The Sleeping Pills Beside The Bed Of The Cancer Patient ... It Is The Duty Of Society To Protect The Physicians From Such Requests.

I Had My Father's Mind, But He Had His Mother's Mind. Fortunately, His Mother Lived With Us And So I Early Realized That Intellectual Abilities Of The Kind I Shared With My Father And Grandmother Were Not Sex-linked.

A Small Group Of Thoughtful People Could Change The World.

In Almost Any Society I Think, The Quality Of The Nonconformists Is Likely To Be Just As Good As And No Better Than That Of The Conformists.

Between Friends There Is No Bribery. ... The Relationship Of Friends Is Intrinsically Fair And Equal. Neither Feels Stronger Or More Clever Or More Beautiful Than The Other.

Samoa Culture Demonstrates How Much The Tragic Or The Easy Solution Of The Oedipus Situation Depends Upon The Inter-relationship Between Parents And Children, And Is Not Created Out Of Whole Cloth By The Young Child's Biological Impulses.

Leisure And The Cultivation Of Human Capacities Are Inextricably Interdependent.

Grandparents Are Given A Second Chance To Enjoy Parenthood With Fewer Of Its Tribulations And Anxieties.

Trending Author

Michael Shannon

Bruce Feirstein

Category